Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2017 Valparaiso earthquake


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. The main policy-based arguments to keep the article rest on the significant, ongoing coverage of the event in international news and academic outlets, which they argue makes the event meet the notability standard for inclusion of events on Wikipedia. The strongest argument to delete the article is that the earthquake did not cause enough damage or was not a unique enough phenomenon. This argument to delete has merit, but the weight of the policy-based arguments to keep the article is stronger due to the ongoing coverage of the event.  Malinaccier ( talk ) 20:36, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

2017 Valparaiso earthquake

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

No impact from the event in a region that is very active seismically. There are destructive earthquakes in Chile, but this is not one of them. There are some scientific papers on the event, but their coverage focuses on non-notable aspects of the event including "historical seismicity, and scientists' seismic inversion of the event". These are not characteristics that make earthquakes notable in the encyclopedia. See Notability (earthquakes). Dawnseeker2000 18:55, 1 June 2022 (UTC) Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Liz Read! Talk! 23:29, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Chile-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 18:58, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment I'm unsure what to vote. However, although it is definitely not an extremely noteworthy earthquake, the article goes into great detail and it was also an important event in the 2010s. It caused no great damages, but prompted a tsunami warning. I'm more inclined to think it should be kept, but very weakly. --Bedivere (talk) 19:22, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
 * What makes earthquakes notable is significant coverage in independent reliable sources, which this appears to have (see my contestation of WP:PROD deletion and my reply on my talk page), not an essay about earthquakes that seems to be focussed on impact rather than sources, or how seismically active the region is. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:45, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with the above. And yet there is a lot of sources and I wondered if anyone has reviewed them or has more expertise in assessing them than me. CT55555 (talk) 22:46, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I haven't reviewed the sources in the article, but I have looked at the ones I mentioned above. Phil Bridger (talk) 07:07, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Events-related deletion discussions.  Spiderone (Talk to Spider) 20:38, 1 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete – More of a list rather than an article about the earthquake. Nothing is really elaborated about the actual event and there is no lasting impact. Really not notable or important. Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 02:00, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep. I commented above, but now !vote keep on the basis of:
 * https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/4/24/earthquake-strikes-off-coast-of-valparaiso
 * https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/rosetta-stones/the-inside-scoop-on-the-chilean-earthquake-swarm/
 * https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/24/chile-regrets-panic-caused-by-mistaken-tsunami-warning-after-earthquake
 * 2021 article that briefly talks about it (that is important, that the coverage is ongoing) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/24/chile-regrets-panic-caused-by-mistaken-tsunami-warning-after-earthquake
 * And the ones mentioned by User:Phil_Bridger on his talk page. I agree with Phil_Bridger, it's not about our assessments of the side of the earthquake, it's about the notability of the earthquake. Quoting from Phil_Bridger's talk page:
 * https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL074767
 * https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL075675
 * https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S003192011830027X
 * All the academic papers https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=2017%20Valparaiso%20earthquake&btnG= CT55555 (talk) 23:59, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
 * A minor comment that the 2021 Guardian source mentioned an 8.3 earthquake in 2017, but the linked url to that 8.3 earthquake was dated 2015. The earthquake in discussion is a magnitude 6.9 which I don't think they intended to mention. Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 12:19, 9 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete. I do not see anything significant about this earthquake. It might have a big magnitude however quakes of this size are pretty common and undamaging with no long lasting impact for Chile. The article also contains only lists with barely any written paragraphs as well as no important aspects about the earthquake (which it had hardly any). Reego41 12:40, 9 June 2022 (UTC) — Reego41 (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Delete - This article has literally no purpose at all. The quake was nothing significant seismologically, other than being another average 6+ Chilean burp. And the fact that people are saying that this article is being cited by numerous "independent reliable sources" does not help this case at all. Since like many other people have said above me, what significance does the event itself hold? CoaÏ (Moctalk with me) 04:49, 11 June 2022 (UTC) — Moctiwiki (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Delete - This earthquake had no impacts, it was just a typical large Chile earthquake. Like others have said, the event getting a lot of media coverage doesn't contribute to its importance. Any earthquake of this magnitude hitting a populated area gets media coverage, what matters is that the quake has damaging effects. Which this didn't. MagikMan1337 (talk) 16:23, 12 June 2022 (UTC) — MagikMan1337 (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * I think you and the posters above are missing the point of Wikipedia notability guidelines. Getting media attention is what proves notability. Your original research or opinions about the size, impact, of an earthquake are not grounded in wikipedia policy.
 * Our task at AfD is less to share our opinions on importance, and more discussing notability which is inherently linked to media coverage. CT55555 (talk) 16:30, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Alright, yes I do see that there is a decent amount of media coverage, I do see what you mean however the articles about this earthquake mostly focus on the seismic characteristics of the quake (which is the case with every quake with little to no impact that have a decently big magnitude) and historical seismicity in the area which doesn't relate to the present-time. I would also like to mention that this quake was not mentioned on the media for long; it was only notable for a short time since this event is not rare and is rather usual. There's just no need to have an article for every quake that we see on the news with a quick and small article about it; there is no obligation to have it, maybe common sense could be applied and significance and importance can be used as a factor. Reego41 17:37, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to make some comments on the sources that were listed numerically. Feel free to reply to any comments.
 * Let's go through CT55555's sources one-by-one (provided by Dawnseeker2000)
 * 1) Al Jazeera – It says (right in the title) that "Magnitude 7.1 temblor off Valparaiso did not cause any serious damage", and in the text of the article it also states "in general the situation is pretty normal bearing in mind the quake’s intensity". No EQ article can be based on this source.
 * 2) Scientific American – Again, this one says right in the title "According to locals, Valparaiso's 6.9 isn't worthy of being called an earthquake" and down in the article text it says "As you're about to see, residents of this South American country require their quakes to be quite a bit more substantial before they're impressed."
 * 3) The Guardian – This article is about the Chilean government's apology about the evacuation notice: "The ministry also sent a message to mobile phones around the country urging people to abandon coastal areas, though the ministry later said it was sent in error" and "He said the agency regretted the inconvenience caused by its messages, which he blamed on a technical error."
 * 4) This is the same The Guardian article.
 * 5)  – This journal article talks about scientists' interest in potential seismic gaps, the modeling of stress transfer, comparison to other events, and other events in the area. If this were an EQ with some impact on people, places, or things, these discussions could certainly be included, but not without.
 * 6)  – This article talks about the results of a seismic inversion, a process that attempts to find the origin and type of faulting, a process that is pretty standard in earthquake investigations. The inversion itself is definitely not notable, but it could be included in an article about an earthquake that had some other valid reason for being notable.
 * 7)  – This is another seismic inversion, which is WP:ROUTINE. Nothing to write about in an encyclopedia.
 * Notability is not about small or big. There are articles about small events, tiny things, abstract concepts. Notability is about things making the news. There is not a minimum richter scale for articles, no matter how much you might want that to be how things work. Things can be notable for being boring. For being small. For being mislabeled. For being mild. It made that news. That is the key thing here. CT55555 (talk) 04:00, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Before you spend a lot of time typing out many times that each of the sources I mentioned don't say that this is a very big earthquake it might make more sense to just conclude that I am !voting keep because the subject of the article is notable as per the WP:GNG guidelines and you are voting delete because you have a perspective that you think earthquake articles should only be created based on their size, perhaps based on the essay WP:N(EQ), with complete disregard for Wikipedia notability criteria. Forcing us to both repeat our stances on that is not helpful. Notability (earthquakes) is not policy, not guidance, just an essay, just the opinion of one or more people, it does not superseded WP:GNG. CT55555 (talk) 04:07, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * You typed out on 1 June: "I wondered if anyone has reviewed them or has more expertise in assessing them than me" so I'm taking the time to evaluate the sources for everyone that's interested. Dawnseeker2000  04:20, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * That seems disingenuous, I said I did not evaluate another editor's source, then I came back later and added my own sources. If you want to evaluate my sources, please evaluate them against guidance and policy and quote the policy. CT55555 (talk) 04:23, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
 * User:Dawnseeker2000 Please stop moving my comments down (I replied to your number 2) and please sign your comments. CT55555 (talk) 04:20, 14 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep. All of Dawnseeker2000's findings above are things that could be included in the article, because they are confirmed by reliable sources. I have some sympathy with those who call for deletion on the grounds that this is not important enough, but the majority opinion here seems to agree with the "GNG fundamentalists" who seem to think that the general notability guideline, which this easily passes, is the only one that counts, with all other guidelines (except possibly for WP:PROF and WP:CORP) being subordinate to it. And, as has been seen in the recent changes to the sports notability guidelines, we seem to be moving in that direction. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:53, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

WP:EVENT I understand that we'll all have our own interpretation of this, but the summary of WP:EVENT is "An event is presumed to be notable if it has lasting major consequences or affects a major geographical scope, or receives significant non-routine coverage that persists over a period of time. Coverage should be in multiple reliable sources with national or global scope."

Now, we all agree that this series of earthquakes did not lead to any lasting impacts and that there is no or little geographical scope. We have argued about the coverage, but my arguments are that it is only routine coverage. The websites all say that there were no serious consequences. The power was out for some folks for some amount of time, but that is not notable. So the news sites' coverage is routine. The journal articles' coverage is also routine because they talk about the non-notable inversion or simply compare the series of shocks to other historical events.

"Media sources sometimes report on events because of their similarity (or contrast, or comparison) to another widely reported incident. Editors should not rely on such sources to afford notability to the new event, since the main purpose of such articles is to highlight either the old event or such types of events generally."

I think it is fair to say that it is a run-of-the-mill event. Dawnseeker2000 04:14, 15 June 2022 (UTC)


 * That reporting about a 2017 event was still happening in 2018 and 2022 refutes this. The size and impact of the earthquake are not part of any notability guidelines (I note the essay that you co-authored, but it is just that, an essay, some people's opinions, not consensus or policy).
 * WP:ROUTINE is about (and I quote) Wedding announcements, sports scores, crime logs not scientific papers, or full articles about events. This is not relevant here.
 * Run-of-the-mill is defined at WP:ROUTINE as common, everyday, ordinary items and I don't think any reasonable analysis of an earthquake that makes international news and provokes academic papers is "everyday" or "ordinary". If it was, I would not have been able to share the global news coverage, the academic papers.
 * I have sympathy for the position you are attempting to argue from many angles. I see that you want only large earthquakes to be notable. But our job is to make arguments on the policy we have, not the policy we want.
 * I could make a very passionate argument that no bank robbery is notable if less than $1m was stolen. I could make very compelling arguments for that. But if CNN and Al Jazeera put a smaller robbery on the front page and if that provoked various universities to write about it, that would make it notable, no matter how compelling a logical argument I made about the notability of a $500,000 robbery.
 * Ultimately, we don't decide what is notable. The news media and the university faculty and the book authors do. How they decide what is notable may not match our wishes. I think you might need to accept that human interest is about qualitative factors as well as quantifiable factors. CT55555 (talk) 05:16, 15 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete - This article does not read as a comprehensive recount of the events, but rather a list. There is very little useful information, but much frivolous information given in tables with little relevance to the topic at hand. More importantly, however, I do not believe that this article even meets notability criteria to be included in the first place. Chile routinely gets magnitude ~7 earthquakes. This specific earthquake did nothing more than startle some locals. Dawnseeker2000 has provided well written "debunks" of each cited article and I stand with it. This article should not exist under the notability guidelines. SamBroGaming (talk) 13:59, 15 June 2022 (UTC) — SamBroGaming (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Which notability guidelines? The general notability guideline doesn't dictate what sources must say, but simply that they must exist with significant coverage. Remember that this is an encyclopedia, not the Guinness Book of Records. Phil Bridger (talk) 14:09, 15 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Comment – I voted earlier but reasoning again. There is no encyclopedic value in the coverage. Media coverage of this event is routine: an earthquake struck, people scared, minimal impact. Not continuous and fails WP:EVENT. This sort of reporting is consistent with earthquakes. That does not make the event worthy of an article. Keeping this would make the encyclopedia a news journal. Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 14:41, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
 * This has plenty of coverage outside news reports in academic books and papers. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:54, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The results of published academic works need to have a level of encyclopedic worthiness. DS2000 went through three sources, reasons I agree with. These ten papers about this event (with varying emphasis) are not worth stating since the event itself has no impact in the first place. I would expect a great deal of important findings for this non-damaging earthquake in order to vote keep. Dora the Axe-plorer (explore) 16:23, 15 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete - As someone who has experienced various mid to high end M6 earthquakes, including this one, I don't consider it to be worthy of having an own article. Despite the intensity of the event, it's odd that these events cause major disruption in Chile and the 2017 event was another example of it. It can be argued that the intense sequence that came with it helped highlight it better, but all in all it doesn't stand out too much in the context of the area. Other similar, nearby quakes, like the April 17th 2012 M6.7 event or the August 23rd 2014 M6.4 event, which I also felt strongly, lack their own articles for reasonable reasons, since they hardly went beyond minor disrupton, aside from small cracks or minor landslides. Therefore I think it's worth deleting this article. Melimoyu (talk) 14:47, 15 June 2022 (UTC) — Melimoyu (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Keep: Or Merge (somewhere). Natural events belong in Wikipedia.  SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:52, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Can you elaborate on that? Obviously natural events get their own articles on Wikipedia, but not every single one. Only the notable events that were particularly damaging or scientifically interesting receive articles. MagikMan1337 (talk) 14:38, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's only the notable events that have their own articles on Wikipedia, and this one is notable per the significant coverage in independent reliable sources. There seem to be many editors coming to this discussion and talking about some definition of notability that does square with our consensus-agreed definition. "Particulary damaging" appears nowhere in our guidelines, and "scientifically interesting" is shown by the sources that have been cited in this discussion. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:26, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The sources explicitly say that the earthquake wasn't interesting... What are you talking about? MagikMan1337 (talk) 02:53, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep or merge into List of earthquakes in Chile, whatever it is useful. As I wrote above in a comment, the earthquake itself wasn't particularly relevant; it provoked a tsunami alert, prompting evacuations, and that was it. However, there are some definitely interesting sources in the article. I still think it is not particularly relevant, but sources tend to prove otherwise. --Bedivere (talk) 17:46, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Merging unwanted content to the various lists of earthquakes was done back in the first decade of WP, but that is no longer done because the lists also have certain criteria that must be adhered to. In other words, the list articles in the earthquake space must also contain only notable events. They are not merely dumping grounds. Dawnseeker2000  18:08, 16 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I guess you're correct. That's why I suggested merging whatever it is useful. If nothing is useful (hence not even making this worthy of a redirect) then it should be deleted. Bedivere (talk) 18:49, 16 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Keep. Passes WP:SIGCOV and WP:NEVENT. From the sources cited in the article and listed above, we can clearly see PERSISTENT significant coverage that is international in scope (WP:GEOSCOPE) and inclusive of scientific journal articles, science magazine articles, and both local and global media (WP:DIVERSE). Notability (earthquakes) is an essay and is not policy. SIGCOV and NEVENT are policies, and I am not seeing a strong case for deletion supported by policy.4meter4 (talk) 00:04, 17 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Delete Not noteworthy enough. Bdonjc talk
 * Keep, no policy-based rationale for deletion, appears to have ample sourcing to support an article. There may be a reasonable question as to whether it's ideal to have a separate article rather than having it covered in List of earthquakes in Chile (which would need to be restructured to be a suitable merge target). But that can be dealt with through the collaborative editing process, among knowledgeable editors in the topic area; AFD has no role here. -- Visviva (talk) 23:43, 17 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Maybe this is a good time to ask someone leaning towards keep: If kept, what is the encyclopedic value of an article like this? Dawnseeker2000  00:20, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Personally I subscribe to the prime objective: we're here to create, as nearly as possible under various legal and practical constraints, a free and open encyclopedia that makes the sum of all human knowledge available and accessible to every reader. Given that objective, I see no reason why an earthquake that has received coverage in multiple reliable sources should not be covered in some form, and I trust that editors in the topic area will best be able to determine exactly what form that coverage should take. Whether or not this should optimally be a freestanding article, it certainly seems useful and encyclopedic in its current form, at least for anyone who might be seeking information on this particular quake; and anybody not seeking such information would be unlikely to suffer any harm from its existence. Any questions about exactly how this earthquake should be covered, and whether it should be merged elsewhere can be addressed by finding positive-sum solutions through the wiki process. There is no need (nor policy basis) for a drastic remedy like deletion. -- Visviva (talk) 01:10, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * OK, what would you say the reader walks away with after reading this article (in terms of knowledge)? I don't think it exceeds what the USGS has for the events (I've been generous with the terms of this search). Dawnseeker2000  17:44, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Delete This quake is irrelevant, pls delete. Sausius (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 00:27, 18 June 2022 (UTC)  — Sausius (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * Delete I believe there's not enough information on this earthquake however I support this do be merged into List of earthquakes in Chile with a brief overview of the quake. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zekromu88 (talk • contribs) 00:40, 18 June 2022 (UTC) — Zekromu88 (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 * The lists of earthquakes also have minimum requirements to be listed. This series of shocks don't align with those minimums. Dawnseeker2000  00:43, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
 * NOTE TO CLOSER. There is a high volume of single-purpose accounts voting delete in this discussion. I suspect that either WP:Sockpuppetry or WP:Meatpuppetry is vote stacking at this AFD. Please consider the strength of the arguments based on policy rather than mere vote count in your close.4meter4 (talk) 20:35, 18 June 2022 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.